“We used to trade information face to face; now we do it online,” said the Rev. Dave Ridder, dean of Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. “But that raises the question of when does borrowing cross the line, and that can be a very thin line to walk. We encourage students to acknowledge the source of an idea, even if they make it their own. They owe that to the congregation.”

Some congregations are unforgiving. “I have heard of ministers getting fired for this,” Ridder said. “Their congregations say, ‘If you’re just going to read someone else’s writing, what are we paying you for?’ ”

The topic of legal studies arose:

“It’s like law students looking at case studies,” Ridder said. Through the online services, seminary students “can learn from the best by studying and analyzing the work of some of the most successful preachers in the country. We’ve always encouraged students to go out and listen to other preachers. Now they can do it online.”

IPBiz reminds readers of what Alan Dershowitz said of law in defense of Laurence Tribe, something to the effect that law had a culture of copying without attribution. Rev. Ridder should be careful in making any analogies to what people do in law!

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I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
in the Capri case in N.D. Ill. An article that I wrote on DNA profiling was cited by the Colorado Supreme Court (Shreck case) and a Florida appellate court (Brim case). I was interviewed by NHK-TV about the Jan-Hendrik Schon affair. I am developing ipABC, an entity that combines rigorous IP analytics with study of business models, to optimize utilization of intellectual property. I can be reached at C8AsF5 at yahoo.com.